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Comment by gegtik | Hacker News Reader

Looks similar to how I do it https://vimeo.com/62869435

Pourover is great because it lets you get intimate with the variables. Good coffee is in a state of tension, between bitter and sour flavors. If you find your coffee doesn't taste good, it's usually out of balance in one direction.

Luckily there are several ways to nudge your coffee toward one end or the other of the continuum, they are related as follows:

  Sour <--> Bitter

  Colder <--> Hotter
  Coarser Grind <--> Finer Grind
  Shorter Brew <--> Longer Brew
  Lighter Roast <--> Darker Roast

The first time I applied these threories and ACTUALLY improved my coffee was an epiphany

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Interesting;

not to lessen your ideal, but both sour and bitter fall into a category of complex flavors.

I absolutely agree that good coffee is a balance of sour (acidity) and bitter, but I take acceptation to the idea that it's a balance betwen these 2 flavors;

a coffee can be both very sour and very bitter!

Consider - nearly all of the complexity in coffee is from the development of acids as the coffee is growing, and the conversion of amino acids and proteins during the roasting process (Maillard reaction) of the bean;

if you over roast the bean the coffee will breakdown too far and develop carbonates, which are both cancerous and unpalatable. That's one type of bitter.

Coffee that's roasted a little less (but still far too much) will contain a campfire note (smokiness).

In both of these instances, good acids (which cause sourness) such as malic, tannic, and citric, are broken down - while less palatable acidic compounds such as acrylamide are produced.

Carbonates? Like sodium carbonate? Maybe you mean acrylamides (think burnt toast), which appear to be carcinogenic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamides#Toxicity_and_carcin...).

I agree with you. From my experience, as you begin to over extract the bean it transitions from bitter to sour. I think sour is just the very extreme case of over extraction.

For baseline, I recommend 2g coffee : 1oz water, 195F-205F for water temp, and 3:30-4:30 for brew time

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